ECHO Newsletter #1
25th January 2025
Welcome to the first edition of the ECHO newsletter!
This newsletter will be published twice a year, and will aim to provide an overview of the ECHO project’s developments and news that occurred within the preceding months. The following sections contain project news from the project’s inception in October 2025 to December 2025.
For questions about the ECHO project, contact Carr Communications EU Project Manager, Dr Sean Travers, at stravers@carrcommunications.ie
What is ECHO?
ECHO is a new EU-funded project that aims to strengthen urban resilience planning and management in Europe. As (peri-)urban areas become increasingly digital, interconnected and complex, alongside growing threats such as climate change, natural disasters and cyber-attacks, there is an urgent need to enhance the resilience and security of critical infrastructures (CIs) and the essential services they support.
The current state of resilience planning and management in Europe faces challenges due to its top-down strategies, which fail to account for specific local or regional needs and result in inadequate operational efficiency and fragmentation of key CI stakeholders and existing resources.
ECHO addresses these challenges by creating a multi-level Resilience Ecosystem that unites CI operators, Emergency Service Providers, and local/regional authorities to co-create innovative tools, services, and strategies for enhanced (urban) resilience planning and management. This will promote best practices and empower stakeholders of all sizes to strengthen the resilience of interconnected systems, ultimately enhancing the security and wellbeing of European citizens and communities.
The 3-year ECHO Project brings together 28 partners from 10 countries, including CI operators, local/regional authorities, Emergency Service Providers, researchers, universities, SMEs and enterprises.
ECHO’s kick off meeting in Athens, Greece
ECHO’s kick off meeting was held on 9th-10th October 2025 in Athens, Greece. The meeting was hosted by ECHO’s project coordinator, Netcompany, and each project partner presented their role in the project as well as the project’s shared objectives.
The meeting provided an excellent opportunity for insightful discussions amongst our consortium as we embark on this 36-month long journey together.
ECHO Website
We were delighted to announce the official launch of the ECHO website this month! The website is the central hub for all information about the project, including the project’s aims, achievements, and remarkable team of project partners and their affiliates.
Stay tuned for further exciting additions to the website as the ECHO project evolves, including videos with our consortium, a project blog, downloadable material and upcoming events. Check out the website here.
Social media milestone
We were thrilled to announce that ECHO reached an exciting milestone: we gained over 200 LinkedIn followers!
We would like to thank you for your continued interest, engagement and support in our project. We shall endeavour to provide you with all the latest ECHO updates and news.
Video series
In November, we were delighted to kick off our ECHO Partner Interview series!
Over the past number of weeks, we published video interviews with the ECHO consortium members. This series uncovers what the ECHO Project is, what challenges ECHO will solve, and what’s innovative and exciting about this project.
Keep an eye out for more of these videos in the weeks ahead!
Missed the series? Watch all of the videos on our YouTube channel and don’t forget to subscribe!
ECHO joins CMINE
We are delighted to announce that ECHO has joined the Societal and Resilience Cluster (SRC) led by CMINE – The Crisis Management Innovation Network!
This cluster brings together projects under the Disaster Resilient Societies framework that share the goal of improving responder technologies. We look forward to new networks, knowledge exchange and synergy-building activities with fellow projects focused on Secure Societies.
Events
Exciting news – our first round of local workshops is currently underway!
This month, ECHO will host workshops in Slovenia, Spain, and Italy. These workshops examine specific local/regional contexts and challenges, discuss current practices, and identify opportunities through concrete use cases. The results of these workshops will serve as the baseline for our resilience strategy.
In November, ECHO was featured on a poster exhibited by our project partner, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Telecomunicación fair. This poster showcased all the projects that Universidad Politécnica de Madrid works on and the fair was attended by students and staff across the university.
In December, our project partner CS Group discussed ECHO in a workshop at the upcoming Envirorisk Fair in Provence. This fair was organised by ENSOSP (French National Fire Officers Academy) and centred on natural, technological and sanitary risk management.
Until next time
We look forward to keeping you up to date on ECHO’s progress and our efforts to make smart solutions for resilient European communities.
Keep up with the latest ECHO news by following us on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and BlueSky.
Our next ECHO newsletter will be published in June 2026.
